OK,  I officially love my Roku box.  I don't have time to write a full review, but I just need to tell the world that they have to watch The King of Kong.  Joystiq has a great review.  Even if you aren't never dropped a quarter into a coin-op you should appreciate the determination of the film's hero to prove that he isn't a 'loser'.

 I've been having some vivid dreams this week.  I dream often, but I seldom remember them.  The other morning I was telling Carrie about my dream the night before.   It was this all about my Mother trying to sell my truck and me having to chase away potential buyers - my truck is not for sale.   There was a lot in the dream about my folks garage that was filled to the brim with boxes and constant shuffling of cars in the driveway.  

My take on the dream was how much I loved my Truck.  Carrie immediately said, "So as much as you want to move into your parent's basement like other geeks your mother doesn't want you."   I don't think I'll be telling her anymore of my dreams.

When I was growing up the best moments that I remember were had during the summer camping on the St. Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands.   It was always filled with joy as the entire family was around, we would have fishing tournaments, cook s'mores, gather round the campfire until all hours of the night, and hike the nature trails.   I remember days when getting onto a raft at one end of the Wellesley Island campgrounds and floating with the current for a mile took hours, and there was nothing I'd rather be doing.

Inevitably the current would take you to the castle ruins.  The ruins were on top of a 40 foot cliff on the top of an outcropping peninsula.  All the cool kids hung out at the ruins.  The cliffs were the gauntlet that proved you belonged with cool kids.  Don't even think of hanging if you weren't jumping.  

I never was the type to run to the top of the cliff and jump because everyone else was jumping.  I am far more analytical than that.  First take a good measure of the cliff -- 35 to 40 feet.  Next watch the way that everyone else jumps, 1, 2, 3 steps then push off (add flare here) hit the water feet first arms down.  OK, no one is coming up bloody, but that's not enough.   Go to the bottom of the cliff and do depth soundings all around the landing spot.  Looks like as long as you land out 12 feet from the base of the cliff you can't hit bottom.

Some kids just jump because everyone else jumps.  Some kids never jump -- they just don't have the stomach for it.   I analyze, validate, weigh the risks.   I ask questions and think about possible danger scenarios.   I may have missed minor opportunities by taking my time and making sure jumping was the proper course of action, but I've haven't yet jumped where I shouldn't have.  Eventually you have to take some risks,  eventually you hold your nose and JUMP !

I've been seeing an increase in desperation for people looking for PHP talent on the newsgroups I subscribe to.   Yesterday I got two clicks to my blog with the phrase trouble finding php coders.  We are doing OK with our recruitment at Crowd Fusion, but we are always on the lookout for more coders.   When I look at the coders we are working with  it is a Perl guy, a Python guy and a Java guy (all of whom can do PHP).   I've got another Java programmer who I'm going to try to convert to PHP, if that works I'm going to stop looking for PHP talent and create it myself.  There is a stigma about PHP with OO programmers, it was well founded 5 years ago, but PHP is now a quality Object Oriented language.

If you want to work with a quality team on great web projects let us know. If it doesn't work out with us, I can hook you up with some other great people I've worked with, specifically Kevin Lee at Didit, and Jason Calacanis at Mahalo.